


Close Calls

by on_my_toes



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: “I — well, I just thought you should know, I’m starting at Julliard in the fall. I’m moving to New York in a few weeks to get settled in.”Elio and Oliver get a second chance, but only if they're both willing to take it. Or, three times Oliver saved Elio's life, and one time Elio saved his.





	1. Chapter 1

Professor Perlman — no, Samuel now — calls once a month or so, always on a Sunday, always in the afternoon. Even now, a full year after his time in Italy, Oliver has a strange premonitory sense for when he is about to call; even now, a full year after his time in Italy, he sits on the edge of his couch for the entire half hour of it, waiting for scraps of news from Elio like a starving man sucking the rind of a fruit.

 

In June, Samuel’s call starts out much like any other; he says Oliver’s replacement is due in a few weeks, and wonders, since she is out of NYU, if they have any friends in common. Oliver is afraid for a moment that Samuel will suggest he meet up with her for coffee before she goes — the last thing Oliver wants, he is realizing, is to stare into the face of someone who will sleep in the room he still haunts from thousands of miles away — but instead, he tells Oliver that Elio would like to speak with him.

 

“Oh. Okay. Yeah, put him on.”

 

There’s a shuffle, and then a pause. Oliver can practically hear the gears turning in Elio’s head from where he sits.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Hey,” says Oliver, in a strange voice that isn’t his own. Forced. Measured. Brimming with a strange kind of exhilaration, the kind that makes him feel like he is running at full speed even though he hasn’t moved an inch. “How are you?”

 

“I’m well. And you?”

 

“I’m — yes, me too.”

 

Elio’s voice is every bit as calculated as Oliver’s, every bit as formal. It feels like talking to a stranger.

 

“I — well, I just thought you should know, I’m starting at Julliard in the fall. I’m moving to New York in a few weeks to get settled in.”

 

“You’re — ” His heart stops. No, just seizes, and then starts beating in his throat. “Congratulations. Julliard. Elio, that’s amazing.”

 

Elio seems disappointed in the reaction, for some reason. “Well,” he says.

 

And then it hits Oliver — Julliard. Elio, in the same city; Elio, presumably a subway ride or a few dozen blocks away. Elio, who must have auditioned sometime in the winter, a few mere miles from where Oliver teaches, and never said a word.

 

“Well,” Elio says again, his voice a little stronger. “I figured — I just — I thought it might be weird, if we ran into each other on the street or something, and you didn’t know. So now you know.”

 

Oliver’s mouth is open, but words aren’t coming out of it. Then he hears Elio suck in a hesitant breath and comes back to himself.

 

“What if I — I mean, we don’t have to run into each other by accident. I can show you around.”

 

“Oliver, you don’t have to do that.”

 

“I want to,” he says, standing suddenly, with some misdirected energy that he has nowhere else to put. “If you do, that is. We’ll be living in the same city. No point in being strangers.”

 

He’s playing a dangerous game here and he knows it. Given the time to think about it — given space away from the sound of Elio’s fidgeting on the other side of the phone, his voice so clear in his ear that it’s dizzying all the other more logical thoughts that usually rule him — he might never do this. Might never make this offer, or say these words.

 

“Right,” says Elio.

 

It’s clear that this is not the way he was expecting this conversation to go; heartbreakingly clear. He was expecting Oliver to dismiss him, expecting that “congratulations” to be followed by the same stony silence they’ve observed now for over six months.

 

And maybe it should.

 

“Call me when you’re settled in.”

 

“You’re sure?”

 

It’s his last chance to back out. Or some kind of chance, maybe, that hasn’t taken shape yet.

 

“Elio. I’m sure.”

 

* * *

 

Elio calls the second week of July; he’s moved into his dorm and mostly unpacked, but still has a few days before his summer intensive starts.

 

“Wanna meet up at the 72nd street entrance to the park in an hour?”

 

“Like, today?” Elio asks. 

 

It’s pouring down rain, Oliver realizes a beat too late.

 

“Why not?”

 

Oliver arrives precisely an hour after they hang up the phone. Elio is already there, leaning against the stone wall barrier between the park and the road; the sight of him knocks his breath into the wrong places, outside of his body, stuttering and uncertain. Elio's hair is longer, the dark curls slick with rain and framing his face, _that face_ , the one that has woven in and out of his dreams and waking mind in infinite beats that somehow did not do it justice. He looks like something timeless, something precious — something painted and preserved in a memory, brought back to life by some kind of magic Oliver doesn’t understand.

 

He composes himself within the second, and crosses the street. Elio looks up; the smile he offers is close-lipped, hesitant, but his eyes are bright and genuine.

 

Oliver doesn’t say hello. Just reaches out and hugs him. There’s a beat, then, when Elio is in his arms again and he smells that familiar sweetness of him that Oliver feels displaced in time, displaced within his own body.

 

Elio pulls away first. “You look the same,” he says, evidently pleased by this.

 

Oliver wants to hold Elio’s chin in his hands, tilt his face closer for inspection. “You don’t,” says Oliver, also pleased by this; pleased that Elio can look any way, any age, any hairstyle, and still be as familiar and skin deep to him as he was before.

 

Elio rocks a bit on the heels of his sopping wet shoes. They’ve both neglected umbrellas; Oliver mentioned a few places he wanted to show him on a walking tour, and the way it’s raining right now, an umbrella is pointless. It’s coming down in humid, heavy sheets, soaking them under their raincoats.

 

“This is where John Lennon was shot, isn’t it?”

 

Oliver follows Elio’s gaze to the Dakota across the street. Of course Elio knows that, the way Elio knows most things; he wonders why Elio is asking, pretending not to be as well-informed as he is when the last time Oliver saw him, he wouldn’t dare pretend anything at all.

 

“Yes,” says Oliver. “It’s been here since 1884. One of the most prestigious residences in the city; the architecture is from the same firm that built the Plaza Hotel.”

 

“I take it the co-op didn’t accept your application?”

 

Oliver cracks a grin, relieved at the barb. “Still waiting to hear back, actually. Fingers crossed.”

 

Elio huffs out a laugh and falls into step with him, somehow at ease and uneasy, like Oliver’s favorite song is playing on the radio and he’s just anticipated that he can’t remember the next line. They walk along the edge of the park, Oliver leading them up to the Museum of Natural History, then weaving in and out to show him his favorite coffee shops, the bigger cinema and the small screen that shows independent movies, the little bookstore that he’s gone out of his way to shop in despite living closer to Harlem.

 

They duck into the park, then, so Oliver can show him the reservoir; he leads him up to the northernmost part of it, their shoes sticking in the mud, their toes squelching with every step.

 

“From here you can usually see the tops of all the buildings in midtown,” says Oliver. “But with the fog …”

 

“Well, I’ll have plenty of chances to come back,” says Elio. He leans his arms on the gate between the reservoir and the gravel path, propping his head on it and staring into the foggy abyss. Oliver stands beside him, feeling suddenly awkward, like he doesn’t know how to move his body or position it when he’s this close, when there is this _stillness_ and there are so few people around that it feels like they are the only people for miles.

 

It’s Elio who breaks the silence: “So my father says you’re not getting married.”

 

Oliver opens his mouth; to say what, he isn’t sure.

 

Elio pulls himself away from the gate abruptly. “Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t.” His lip quirks upward with irony. “No speeches.”

 

“Elio.”

 

“Let’s go get coffee from that place you were talking about,” says Elio, already walking away.

 

Oliver follows, a step behind, letting Elio lead even though this is Oliver’s city and Oliver’s job. He wonders how he should explain himself; the explanation he gave Samuel was bare at best. That the decision was mutual. That the wedding is off. But Oliver didn’t tell him the whole truth: that the marriage itself may not be. That his parents are still attempting to pull strings, and Carly is still hovering in the fringes, her eyes sincere and filled with a poignant kind of sorrow: _I still love you. We could make this work._

 

He’s blinking the sight of her out of his eyes when they’re crossing Central Park West. Elio reaches the curb before Oliver does, then pauses, glancing back — _Am I going the right way?_ Oliver is expecting to see a shadow there, some reflection of the misery that he himself is feeling, but Elio seems calm. Not resigned, but accepting.

 

He used to be able to see every emotion that crossed Elio’s face, to be able to feel them as profoundly as though they were his own; he worries in light of this. Either Elio is far less invested in Oliver than Oliver still is in him, or in the last year he has become someone who can lie with a smile. Oliver isn’t sure which idea hurts him more.

 

Oliver nods, and Elio turns back, slowing his pace a bit so Oliver can catch up.

 

And then Oliver hears the screech of a brake, the telltale whine of a car starting to hydroplane. He turns around before Elio does, sees the trajectory of the delivery truck, sees his whole world cave in on itself in less than a second.

 

He’s reaching out before he can fully process what’s happening, grabbing Elio’s hand and _yanking_ , pulling him back so far that they both end up spilling back into the crosswalk. No less than a beat later the delivery truck comes barreling through just where Elio was standing, jumping the sidewalk, coming to a stop just before it slams into the florist’s shop.

 

Oliver’s body is a live wire. He’s scrambling back to his feet, his hand empty, slipped out of Elio’s once they went down because of the slickness of the rain.

 

Elio’s there, still on the ground, laying in the crosswalk. Oliver leans over him, his hands on his face — ”Elio, _Elio_ ” — but Elio’s eyes are wide open, and all of him seems to be accounted for, please, god —

 

After a moment Elio wheezes, and Oliver realizes it’s that the wind has been knocked out of him.

 

“C’mon. I’ve got you,” says Oliver, offering his hand.

 

Cars around them are screeching to a halt; the light is green and they need to _move_. Elio seems to register this, taking Oliver’s hand, letting Oliver secure the other one around his shoulder and haul him up to his feet.

 

Only then does Elio gasp and cough for a moment, clutching at his chest.

 

The driver of the truck spills out. “Is everyone okay? Is he okay?”

 

“Fine,” Elio manages to say, waving the hand that isn’t wrapped around Oliver’s. Oliver realizes his grip on Elio’s is vice-like, or maybe it’s Elio whose hand is too tight around his, but he’ll be damned if he lets it go now.

 

Elio is still wheezing, looking a little stunned, his eyes flitting from the truck to Oliver — and there, when their eyes connect, is everything. The weight of all of it. Like the fear and the adrenaline cracked some visage, and he is staring right into the heart of Elio again, as wary and hopeful and hurt as he was the moment Oliver’s train pulled away.

 

“It’s okay. Everyone’s okay,” Oliver tells him.

 

Elio nods, and Oliver pulls him down the block, past the driver and the florist and the people who have collected on the sidewalk to gawk at them. A few people stop them — ”Are you two okay?” and “That was quite the save, young man” — but Oliver is on autopilot, answering politely for them both, pushing down the street until they hit 98th and then putting as much distance between themselves and Elio’s near death as he can.

 

As soon as they’re alone, Oliver stops abruptly, letting go of Elio’s hand only so he can secure them on Elio’s shoulders. They’re both shaking, Elio’s eyes so wide on his that they seem bottomless.

 

“You’re okay?” he asks. “You’re really okay?”

 

“You — you saved my life,” Elio gasps.

 

“Barely,” says Oliver, an edge in his voice. He’s furious, with a violence that scares him — he wants to go back and punch that driver in the face. Wants to make him feel the same horror that Oliver just did, wants his eyes to be branded with his worst nightmare the way Oliver’s will be for the rest of his life.

 

Elio’s face wobbles for just a moment, his cheeks already flush with embarrassment. Only then does Oliver understand just how cultivated, how planned his whole persona has been this whole afternoon; how he was clinging to it like a lifeline to save his pride, and now the only thing he could not have prepared for has shattered it. Oliver pulls him in to end his misery, to let him have some privacy in the moment the terror finally hits him.

 

Elio falls into him in that same inevitable way he always did, their bodies pressed like they were grown to fit into each other’s, even as Elio’s shoulders shake and Oliver stands as tense and rigid as a stone. He glances down the street to make sure they’re still alone and then gently, hesitantly, strokes his fingers through Elio’s hair, the way the once did when Elio was his to calm and his to move.

 

The rain is still streaming around them, bone deep, stripping them bare. The roar of it is suddenly so loud that it drowns out his own thoughts.

 

Not for long enough, though. Because that one damning thought is back, the way he knew it would be, the way he always will: Elio is his everything. And despite his fear, despite his rage and his self-loathing and every unfathomable feeling he has had since the moment he knew Elio was coming, there is still no truth more certain to him than that.

 

Elio starts shaking in earnest then, to an alarming enough degree that Oliver pulls back, worried Elio is in hysterics. And maybe he is — his face is cracked open, his eyes pinched shut, his whole body bending in laughter.

 

“What?” asks Oliver, incredulous.

 

It takes Elio a few moments to collect himself. When he does, he casts an almost careless hand on Oliver’s chest, leaning into him and still laughing as he says, “I was just imagining — you having to call my parents and tell them I’d been killed by a _doughnut truck_.”

 

“It’s not funny,” Oliver protests, but he’s laughing now too, against his will.

 

“What would they even put in the obituary?” says Elio, leaning so far that Oliver has to lean back to steady himself, the two of them in a veritable fit of laughter.

 

“Your parents would never be able to eat doughnuts again,” says Oliver, trying to sound grave for comedic effect but bursting into another peel of laughter halfway through.

 

Elio nearly loses it at that. “And you _would?_ ”

 

“Well, I got over it the last time someone I knew was hit by a doughnut truck, so.”

 

Elio cackles and swats at him, and just like that, the distance has been bridged; just like that, they are Elio and Oliver again, for better or for worse.

 

They eventually collect themselves enough to get coffee and split two sandwiches at the coffee shop, sitting soaking wet in their booth, the place looking abandoned. They talk without inhibition, Elio gesticulating in that familiar way of his, so bright and eager that Oliver might have imagined that he looked older when he first saw him this afternoon; here is Elio again, suspended in time, exactly the way he left him.

 

He walks Elio back to his dorm, under the pretense of knowing where it is, but privately because he is suddenly terrified to let Elio out of his sight — suddenly all too aware of all the harms, big and small, that can befall him in this city, beyond Oliver’s control. Elio seems to share this same sense of unease when they pause outside of his building, turning to each other to say goodbye.

 

Oliver doesn’t do a sweep of the street the way he did before, and that’s how both he and Elio know this hug will be brief; the kind of hug that is so achingly hard to wrench himself from that he wishes they wouldn’t hug at all.

 

“If you say _Later_ , I’m going to kill you,” Elio warns as they pull away.  

 

“I thought you said I just saved your life.”

 

Elio nudges his shoulder with his. “Thanks for that, by the way.” There's both a sincerity and a lightness in his voice; neither of them wants to fall apart again. 

 

Oliver shrugs. “Anytime." Then he pivots on his heel, casts Elio one last glance, and smirks. “Later.”

 

He hears Elio’s indignant scoff, but there isn’t any real irritation in it; only a fondness. A memory revisited, softened at its edges, cast in warmer colors.

 

Oliver shoves his hands into his pockets and heads back out into the rain. Within a few hours, he knows, he will be a wreck. Maybe as soon as when he gets back on the train he will second guess everything he just said and did, will dissect every intention he should and shouldn’t act on, will pull this entire afternoon apart with a fine-toothed comb and find some way to sabotage this easy rapport he and Elio might have.

 

But in this moment, he allows himself a small peace. Elio is safe. Elio is whole. And for now, that is more than enough.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes six months for the other shoe to drop.

 

Oliver has an idea of what will happen: these easy, friendly chats they have together — the walks through Central Park, the evenings in the library where Elio studies and Oliver grades his papers, the weekend lunches and the occasional indulgent ticket to a show — will devolve into that base, humming pulse that neither of them have ever been able to ignore. They will find themselves unexpectedly alone, and Elio won’t even mean to, but he’ll push, and push, and then they will find themselves right back where they started: tangled in each other’s bodies, Elio’s mouth pressed to his, heedless and animalistic and ignorant of the consequences.

 

And because of this, Oliver is constantly on guard. There is a part of him watching Elio, and another part of him _watching_ Elio — making sure that they never cross a line. Ready to pull back if Elio slips up and comes too close. Mentally rehearsing what he’d say, what he’d do, how he’d handle it when Elio did. Because yes, being Elio’s friend is sheer agony; but the pain of it is somehow more endurable than the idea of not having Elio in his life at all.

 

He is almost smug in his preparation for it, in the safety net he has created for the two of them. There are a hundred thousand ways they could break this, whatever this fragile thread is between them, and Oliver has accounted for every single one of them.

 

It turns out, though, that there are a hundred thousand and one ways; Oliver accounted for everything except for himself.

 

Early in December, Elio performs in his first showcase. Oliver watches his lithe hands fly across the keys, every vibration of the piano humming under his skin, the entire auditorium electric with his performance. There is a beat, when Elio finishes, and comes back to himself; he flushes, looking out at the audience with a disarming kind of bashfulness, his eyes unintentionally latching onto Oliver’s in the third row.

 

Something in him suctions, his chest too tight, his heart too swollen to exist in it. He should have known right then, right then in that rickety theater chair in the dim of the stage lights, that no good could come of the night. That he was on a crash course to certain disaster.

 

Instead, when Elio emerges from backstage, Oliver envelops him in a hug that lasts too long, that squeezes too tight.

 

“I’ve forgotten how much I missed hearing you play,” says Oliver in his ear.

 

Elio beams, no trace of irony, no trace of his usual caution. He is drunk on the success of his performance, and Oliver, perhaps, is drunker.

 

Other people approach Elio to congratulate him; a group of girls in his class fawn over him, kissing his cheek, one of them even running a hand through his hair. Oliver watches this with a strange kind of superiority, as Elio’s gaze time and time again flits back to Oliver, smiling that conspiratorial, close-lipped smile that Oliver knows he only smiles for him.

 

“A group of us are grabbing drinks,” says Elio.

 

Oliver doesn’t have to ask to know it’s an invitation. He follows Elio out into the chill, down a few blocks to a bar, where a crush of people have already hit the dance floor. He buys them each a beer — "I’ll get the next round," Elio offers, but Oliver won’t hear it — and it’s far too loud to talk, so Elio and Oliver and the group of students and friends who followed from the recital head to the dance floor.

 

It only takes minutes for them all to scatter, lost in themselves, in their dancing partners, in the beat pulsing off of the walls. Then it’s just Oliver and Elio in a crowd of strangers — Elio, with his wild curls, with his eyes intent on Oliver, fringed with dark lashes, with his pale skin reflected off the patterned lights that ricochet off the walls.

 

Oliver dismisses himself, comes back with shots. Elio rolls his eyes — Oliver knows he isn’t much for drinking hard liquor like this, so brutish, so _American_  — but he takes the shot anyway. His whole face puckers and he laughs out loud, the sound of it swallowed by the noise of the bar.

 

He dances until it feels like he has left his own body, until he loses Elio to the crowd; it’s someone’s bachelor party, and he celebrates by offering free shots to anyone he passes. Oliver takes another, letting it burn down his throat, and then, in a moment of utter impulsiveness, goes to the bar and buys two more; one for him, and one for Elio, who has all but disappeared.

 

He downs his, and quickly discovers that the perils of rejoining the dance floor to find Elio is that Elio’s shot is getting jostled by strangers. No point in wasting it — Oliver knocks back what is left of it, his body buzzing, his thoughts blissfully, rapturously simple. Elio. Dancing. Music. It’s as if, for a moment, he is suspended in time, in this respite from the real world, in a place where there are no consequences — no past, no future, nothing but this dance floor with its swarm of faceless strangers and tangled, anonymous limbs.

 

And then, a hand presses to his back, followed quickly by another firmer thud; he turns and sees Elio grinning at him, evidently having found him and knocked his forehead into him from behind.

 

Oliver doesn’t know what possesses him, only that in that moment he is a slave to it — to the gleam in Elio’s eye, to the curve of his pale neck, to the sweet upturn of his full lips.

 

Oliver leans in, grabs Elio by the chin, and kisses him in the middle of the dance floor.

 

For a moment, it is transcendent. For a moment, there is a crescendo, a climax, an infinity that he cannot even fathom, coursing through him as if he isn’t mere flesh and bone. This is what he was put here for; this is where he is meant to be, and the only person he was ever meant to be with. _Cor cordium_ , heart of his heart, blood of his blood —

 

And then he is pitching forward, because Elio is stumbling back. Elio stares at Oliver, stricken, raising a hand to touch his lips.

 

Oliver feels the weight of what he has done all at once, so fully that it feels like being in a dream  — like his legs are too heavy to move, rooting him to the spot, trapping him.

 

“Elio,” he says, but Elio cannot hear; Elio has already turned on his heel and started barreling through the crowd.

 

“ _Elio_.”

 

Oliver is no match for him, not at his size. Elio slips in and out of drunk bodies like a ghost, and Oliver stumbles and murmurs harried apologies, cursing his height and his width and every other part of himself as he tries and fails to chase Elio out to the exit, a pit already forming in his stomach and threatening to gnaw its way out.

 

He hits the street and Elio is already halfway up the block, walking with his head down, with his arms crossed over his chest, like he’s anticipating some kind of blow or holding the pieces of himself together.

 

“Elio, wait.”

 

He doesn’t. Oliver has no choice but to run. Elio must hear his footsteps pick up over the bustle of the city, because he whips around to face him. Oliver stops in his tracks, stunned to see the tears already coursing down Elio’s cheeks.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” says Oliver. His thoughts are too scattered. He can’t think of anything else to say.

 

Elio swipes at his eyes with the back of his sleeve. His coat is still somewhere in the bar.

 

“That’s what I figured,” says Elio bitterly. “You’re _sorry_.”

 

“I wasn’t thinking — ’

 

“I don’t want to see you anymore,” says Elio flatly.

 

It feels like a death blow; like the few terminal moments in a film before the hero looks down and realizes he’s been mortally shot.

 

“What? No. No,” says Oliver. “Elio, it won’t happen again.”

 

Elio squeezes his eyes shut. “You think I don’t _know_ that?” he says. “That’s the problem, Oliver. It won’t. It can’t. You — you have all these reasons you can’t be with me, and I’ve respected them, I’ve tried so hard even though it’s _killing_ me — ”

 

“You think it isn’t killing _me?_ ”

 

Elio tries to answer him, but his breath hitches in a half-swallowed sob. “You’re the reason we aren’t together, Oliver. Not me.”

 

The words are coming out of Elio, but they feel like he is ripping them out of the ground — like they have been waiting there for months now, to unearth themselves and rip the foundation they’ve been trying to build. Oliver sees now that it was a farce, that it always has been; that he has been splintering this entire time, and now it’s Elio who will break.

 

Elio takes a step closer to him, his eyes still wet with tears, his voice low. For a moment Oliver mistakes it for forgiveness.

 

“You can’t just decide when you want me and when you don’t,” he says, with a conviction that slices through Oliver’s heart. “I won’t survive it.”

 

Elio turns, then, and leaves Oliver on the curb. Oliver doesn’t follow; even in the haze of the alcohol and his mounting regrets, he understands that he can’t fix this now. That Elio needs time, and Oliver needs sobering up, and they both need to find new ground to stand on before this one swallows them whole.

 

* * *

 

Oliver wakes up so hungover that he wishes he were dead twice over; once for what he did to Elio, and twice so he wouldn’t have to deal with the pounding in his head and the cramping of his stomach.

 

He gets up, showers, brushes his teeth, and is still convinced that every inch of him smells like alcohol. This can’t wait, though. He heads out of the apartment and takes the train down to Elio’s building, and buzzes to be let in.

 

No answer.

 

Oliver buzzes again. If Elio would just come down — if he would just _talk_ to him — 

 

Eventually it isn’t Elio that comes down, but Elio’s roommate. The pothead with the stringy hair the baggy jeans.

 

“He’s not coming down, man,” he says, looking half apologetic and half irritated. Oliver realizes it’s a Saturday morning and he must have woken half the dorm up with his buzzing. “I dunno what you did to piss him off, but he’s not moving, so.”

 

“Well, tell him I’m waiting down here. And I’m not moving.”

 

The roommate raises his eyebrows at him. “What did you _do?_ ”

 

Oliver ignores this. “Just tell him, okay?”

 

“Cool.”

 

An hour passes. Then another. Then five. Elio doesn’t come down. Oliver is relatively certain there are no other exits to this building, which means Elio has essentially barricaded himself inside the dorm. A few times people try to let Oliver in — he’s making a bit of an ass of himself, loitering out here in the cold for so long — but he wants Elio to come to him when he’s ready.

 

About the time it starts to grow dark, the creeping fear he’s been trying to ease since last night starts to tighten in his chest. _I don’t want to see you anymore._ Elio’s eyes, so pained, so resolute. Could he have truly meant it?

 

Oliver doesn’t come back the next day, but he calls the dorm. He’s told Elio is out. He calls again in the evening. Same message, this time relayed by a giggling girl: “Are you the guy from the recital? Are you Elio’s brother or something?” she says, either flirting with Oliver or trying to get more intel to flirt with Elio.

 

He keeps calling. Shows up another time. Even pothead roommate is nowhere to be found; people come and go, but none of them are people Oliver recognizes as Elio’s friends.

 

At some point the semester is going to end, and Elio will, presumably, fly out to Italy to meet his parents — Oliver aches with the thought of him being so far away, and still so unforgiven. A week after it happens he resolves that he can’t abide it anymore. They can’t backslide like this, into those tense, miserable days of their first summer together — it undid him then and it will end him now.

 

He resolves to ask the first person to leave the building to let him in; by chance, it happens to be pothead roommate.

 

“Oh. It’s you,” he says, clearly stoned.

 

“Yeah,” says Oliver. “Is — is Elio up there? I’ve been trying to get in touch with him …"

 

“Good luck. The little dude’s been out for the count.”

 

“What do you mean?” Oliver asks, suddenly afraid that Elio really _did_ up and leave without telling him.

 

“He’s got the flu. Hasn’t left the room all week.”

 

“Oh,” says Oliver. He’s about to the roommate to let him inside, but he leaves the door ajar and Oliver slides through it without anyone so much as blinking at him. He’s only been here once before, one Elio needed help hauling a new desk chair up the stairs, but he remembers it well enough — third floor, second room to the right.

 

He knocks three times. “Elio, it’s me.”

 

No answer.

 

“Elio,” he says, blowing out an impatient breath.

 

He is itching at the seams, trying to reconcile his panic, his fear, his growing irritation that Elio can’t hear it in his voice; that Elio is punishing him like this, rather than just _talking_ to him; that for all the progress they’ve made, they may as well be back in his parents’ villa, studiously ignoring each other.

 

He twists the knob, and it gives easily enough that he knows it isn’t locked. Still, he waits for a moment for Elio to protest. When he doesn’t, Oliver figures it’s the closest thing to permission he’s going to get.

 

He knows something is wrong before he even fully opens the door. The room is too hot, the air in it unsettled somehow. Oliver hears Elio before he sees him — hears the rattled breaths coming from the bed, too short and too fast. Oliver shuts the door behind him and crosses the room in an instant, to find Elio asleep and paler than he’s ever seen him, his forehead slick with sweat.

 

“Jesus,” Oliver mutters, dropping his bag on the floor and crouching at Elio’s bedside. He presses a hand to Elio’s forehead. It’s searing hot, and even more concerning is that Elio barely even stirs. “Elio. Elio, wake up.”

 

Elio sucks in another sharp breath, his eyes peeling open, hazy on Oliver’s. He opens his mouth to say something, but instead tucks his chin to his chest and coughs, the sound of it rattling in his chest.

 

Whatever the hell this is, it isn't the flu.

 

“We need to get you to a doctor,” he says, his hand still pressed to Elio’s face, pushing back the damp curls.  

 

Elio blinks at him like he’s still trying to decide if he’s there or not. “I did.” He tilts his head toward the bedside table, where Oliver sees some kind of prescription bottle.

 

“When?”

 

“Few days ago,” Elio mumbles, burrowing further into his blankets and letting out another weak cough.

 

“When did it get this bad?” Oliver demands, silently cursing Elio’s roommate for not saying something to someone — literally _anyone_ — sooner.

 

Elio doesn’t answer for a moment, staring at Oliver, just staring, with this almost affectionate kind of delusion. “I dreamed that you kissed me,” he says to himself, as if Oliver isn’t there.

 

Oliver strokes his thumb across Elio’s cheek. “Elio …”

 

Elio closes his eyes, leaning into Oliver’s touch. “I miss you.”

 

“I’m right here, you goose.”

 

Elio shakes his head, his voice hoarse. “No, you’re not.”

 

And Oliver knows what he means the same way he always does, whether he wants to or not. They they’ve both been here the whole time, playing their respective parts, keeping their distance even from inches away. That they can give each other parts of themselves, but never the whole.  

 

Oliver blinks the sudden sting out of his eyes. “Listen,” he starts to say, but Elio’s entire skinny frame seems to convulse; he coughs, and he coughs, with an alarming violence, barely managing to wheeze between each bout of it. Oliver waits, feeling paralyzed by it, his body here but his mind racing, trying to figure out the next course of action to take.

 

Elio finally goes limp; his lips have taken a bluish tint. He’s staring at something, into the crook of his elbow, where he was smothering his coughs. Oliver’s breath stalls in his throat — it’s red. Elio’s coughing up blood.

 

Oliver goes into autopilot.

 

“We’ve got to go.”

 

“Can’t go,” says Elio, closing his eyes.

 

“We have to. Where are your shoes?”

 

Elio mumbles something that Oliver doesn’t catch. He finds Elio’s loafers, pulls the covers off of him and starts putting them on Elio’s feet. Then he eases Elio up to a sitting position, Elio still breathing too fast, too tightly.

 

Oliver strips off his own coat and puts it around Elio. Elio lets him, as heedless as a ragdoll.

 

“C’mon,” says Oliver. He leans down and hoists Elio to his feet, half-supporting his weight as he rights himself. Elio’s eyes flash for a moment — that quick charge of defensiveness whenever he’s embarrassed — but it’s gone in another second, Elio bent over and coughing again, more red staining his sleeve.

 

The inside of Oliver’s brain is a scream.

 

Somehow, against all odds, he ushers Elio down the narrow flights of stairs and out onto the curb. Another student, some friend of Elio’s, spots them and immediately runs out to hail a cab. They’re at the entrance of the closest ER within minutes, but it feels like it takes years — Elio sagging his weight into Oliver in the backseat, a hand clutching his chest, his face practically bloodless by the time they arrive.

 

A nurse takes one look at Elio when they walk in and admits him immediately. Oliver hovers for a moment, not sure what to do, but nobody stops him from following. Within mere seconds of Oliver handing Elio over and letting someone settle him on a bed, Elio’s eyes slide shut like his body has just been waiting for permission to shut down. A nurse leans down to look at him and yells something that summons a doctor, and it occurs to Oliver that he can’t hear Elio wheezing anymore, that it’s both terribly loud and terribly quiet all at once. Someone straps an oxygen mask to Elio’s face and they wheel him away and then he’s gone, into a room where they shut the door in Oliver’s face.

 

He wants to cry, or scream, or hit something. Instead he finds an orderly, and asks where he can make a long distance call.

 

* * *

 

It takes a day and a half for Samuel and Annella to arrive. Elio isn’t awake for any of it. Oliver sits like a guard dog next to his bed, sleeping fitfully every few hours, waking up to find that the sight of the IV and the drips administering antibiotics and the tubes they’ve put in his nose are no less shocking to him to see the fiftieth time as they are the first.

 

“He’s lucky you got him here when you did,” says a nurse, who is probably trying to comfort Oliver but doing exactly the opposite: “I’ve seen patients with complications from pneumonia before, but not like that. He was going downhill fast. Another few minutes, even ...”

 

 _Don’t tell me that_ , Oliver wants to snap. Instead he nods, listless, only managing to come back to life when Elio’s parents arrive and he feels this gut-churning, selfish _relief_ — someone else can make the decisions now. They’ve been looking to Oliver, and Oliver has been petrified he’s been making all the wrong ones.

 

Annella is at Elio’s bedside in an instant, carding her fingers through his curls, her eyes already glistening with tears. It’s Samuel who waits a beat in the doorway, and nods at Oliver in this way that makes him ache.

 

Oliver isn’t sure where the doctor is, so he tries to explain: “He had the flu, but it turned into pneumonia. There’s a bunch of fluid in his lungs … he was coughing up blood. They’re trying to clear it. His fever only broke last night, but he hasn’t really woken yet.”

 

Samuel takes one of Oliver’s hands in both of his and holds his gaze. “Thank you, Oliver.”

 

Oliver’s eyes hit the floor. He somehow knows that Elio must have told him what happened; or if not specifically what happened, he alluded to it, and Samuel filled in the blanks.  

 

A few moments later, once she has accounted for her son, Annella leans in and kisses him on the cheek. “Our _cauboi_ saved the day,” she says. She grabs him by the chin and inspects him. “Now please, Oliver. Go home and get some sleep.”

 

It’s the last thing Oliver wants to do, but he understands in the brief moment he almost protests that it’s not about him. The Perlmans need some time alone with their son, with themselves — need a chance to process this without Oliver’s eyes on them.

 

It isn’t until Oliver goes home and tries to close his eyes that he finally lets himself go. He sits on the edge of his mattress, sinks his head into his hands, and cries.

 

* * *

 

When Oliver returns to the hospital the next day, Annella is out looking for breakfast; Samuel informs him that Elio woke up in the night and spoke to them, but fell back asleep a few hours ago. The relief of that alone feels like it might knock him over, like a breeze knocking over a house made a sticks.

 

Oliver sits next to Samuel, further relieved to see that Elio is breathing on his own, that he can actually see his face again. He wants to say something to Samuel — something comforting, or something calming and authoritative. Something to ease what was undoubtedly two straight days of fear as they scrambled to book a flight and get themselves here from halfway across the world. But suddenly Oliver’s chest is so tight with the thought of it — with these parents who care so much and so unconditionally, who accept everything in all of its bright or ugly forms, who are so warm with love that it seems to buoy them, take them to some other plane. The idea of it used to be foreign to Oliver. Now, knowing them for as long as he has, it almost feels like the universe dealt him a slap in the face for the parents he knows.

 

And so it is unintentional, but perhaps inevitable, when Oliver says quietly, “Did he tell you what happened?”

 

Samuel doesn’t beat around the bush. “I gathered enough from his phone call.”

 

Oliver hangs his head. Samuel rests a hand on his knee.

 

“I told him to talk to you. To be forgiving. I know this has been hard on you both.”

 

Oliver looks up, too fast to conceal the surprise on his face. He wasn’t expecting sympathy and now that he has it, he doesn’t want it. The Perlmans’ faith in him has always felt unnatural to him, like wearing a stolen coat, like something he doesn’t deserve.

 

Oliver has always prided himself in having a plan — or, in lieu of that, pretending to have one. He was raised to be sturdy, to be sure. To impress and to provide. To be everything his parents wanted him to be, which in the end, was more of a trophy than a son.

 

Being treated like one is disarming.

 

“What do you want, Oliver?”

 

Oliver has never been asked that before. He’s startled by how fast the answer comes anyway: Elio. It has been that short and that simple since the summer they met.

 

But he can’t have Elio without hurting him, too. That is the one thing Elio doesn’t understand. Oliver doesn’t have anything to lose anymore, but Elio does — he just doesn’t know it yet.

 

He holds Samuel’s gaze, helpless to say any of it, but grateful that he seems to hear it anyway.

 

“Here is what I think: you would be happy together. There would be consequences, because there always are.” He lifts his eyes back toward Elio. “You could live apart well enough, eventually, and find some peace. But this — this in-between state you’ve been in — it can only hurt you both.”

 

Samuel turns to him then, and offers him a quiet smile that Oliver tries his best to return.

 

“In the meantime,” says Samuel, “am I correct in presuming you were going to be spending the holidays alone in the city?”

 

Oliver’s answer is sheepish. “Yes.”

 

“Well, it looks like we’ll be staying here for the time being, and we would be honored if you’d spend them with us.”

 

Oliver feels his cheeks warming with a self-conscious, almost little kid-like kind of flush. “I … I wouldn’t want to …”

 

“Elio was already proposing we invite you back to Italy for the break,” says Samuel. “From the way we ended our call, I’m sure he had every intention of bringing it up, before this happened.”

 

Oliver has to look away for a moment, because of how staggering the relief feels. This past week has been a hell of thinking Elio might never speak to him again, of imagining some nightmare future where they led these strange, parallel lives in the same city, so close but never close enough to touch.

 

“I would love to,” Oliver says simply. He doesn’t quite trust himself to say anything more.

 

A few hours later, when Annella is out phoning her sister and Samuel is talking to one of the doctors about Elio’s admission forms, Elio stirs back awake. He takes one look at Oliver and closes his eyes again, breathing out a wheezing breath, and saying, “I’m so _sorry_.”

 

Oliver almost laughs. “You’re _what?_ ”

 

“I was going to call you,” Elio rasps, some color returning to his cheeks. His brow is furrowed, his eyes intent. “I was — going to take the train up to your apartment, and …”

 

“Hey, shh,” says Oliver, pressing a hand to his face. Elio doesn't flinch away, leaning into it with the same unconscious ease he did back in the dorm. “I'm the one who's sorry. And you don’t have to explain.”

 

“I want to,” Elio protests.  

 

Oliver traces the bridge of Elio's nose with his thumb, staring into his eyes, wondering if he'll ever be able to look away. “Later, then.”

 

Elio’s lip quirks at the accidental callback. “Later,” he agrees.

 

And in that moment, holding each other's gaze, the rest of it seems tangential to the here and the now — Oliver is just grateful that there is a  _later_ at all. Oliver feels a certainty that is somehow both hopeful and grim that he isn't going to waste it; that Elio is never going to spend one more day wondering where he stands. There will be consequences, he knows. But here, staring into the eyes that have so terminally become the center of his world, he cannot imagine a single one worth living without Elio at his side. 


	3. Chapter 3

“Okay,” says Oliver, his hand hovering above the doorknob. “You’ve got two minutes to get it out of your system.”

 

It’s tradition, sneaking in a few kisses at Oliver’s front door before they emerge into the world. Elio grins a wicked grin, his knees bending just slightly as he leans forward — Oliver never knows exactly _where_ Elio’s going to decide to “get it out of his system,” but today, evidently, it’s Oliver’s neck, where he presses his lips and sucks just lightly enough that he won’t leave a mark.

 

Oliver closes his eyes, the want that was already humming under his skin starting to turn into a roar. Elio’s lips travel further down, just an inch, but it honestly doesn’t matter where he goes; he presses his tongue to the curve of Oliver’s neck for a mere second before Olivers loses every notion of the urgency he had to get them both out the door.

 

Elio gasps in surprise when Oliver grabs him by the shoulders and presses him into the side wall, putting his mouth on his; Oliver can feel Elio’s smirk against him, the quiet _I told you so_ , a cheeky little reminder that Oliver is every bit as powerless to his wiles as Elio is to his.

 

Oliver kisses him a little harder than necessary —  _yeah, yeah, you brat —_ and starts unbuttoning Elio’s shirt.

 

“Maybe more than two minutes, then?” Elio asks, breathless.

 

“You get to be the one who explains why we’re late.”

 

Elio snakes his hand to the buckle of Oliver’s belt. “Only if we do something worth explaining.”

 

A half hour later, after an unnecessarily smug Elio finishes washing himself off in the bathroom, he saunters over to Oliver and nuzzles his head under his chin, his curls tickling Oliver’s neck.

 

“Ready when you are,” he says cheekily.

 

Oliver rolls his eyes, but can’t keep the smile from tugging on his lips. “Sure,” he says, slapping a palm to Elio’s bum and directing him toward the door.

 

Elio stops. “Oh, crap. I left my book at my place.”

 

“Borrow one of mine.”

 

“Hmmm,” says Elio, turning toward the bookcase.  

 

“You know,” says Oliver, coming up from behind and snaking an arm around Elio’s midsection, “this wouldn’t be a problem if …”

 

Elio leans back into Oliver and lets himself go half-limp. He tilts his head upward, pressing a lazy, awkwardly-angled kiss under Oliver’s chin.

 

“If I moved in with you, you’d break up with me in two weeks.”

 

“You’re not _that_ untidy.”

 

Elio grabs the hand that Oliver has wrapped around him and squeezes it. “You’d hate it,” he says, reaching forward and grabbing a dog-eared copy of _Midnight’s Children_. “You’d swim across the Hudson. Hide from me in New Jersey.”

 

“Elio …”

 

Elio swivels away from him. “Were we supposed to bring the wine, or Kara?”

 

Oliver tries not to close his eyes, tries not to seem as aggravated as he is by Elio’s deflection. Elio will be starting his senior year in a month, and the lease to his frankly unlivable studio apartment will be ending in two weeks. This is far from the first time that Oliver has brought it up with him, and far from the first time Elio has shelved the discussion entirely — well, not shelved it so much as avoided it completely, like it’s some kind of scab that will eventually fall off and heal over before Oliver can mind it.

 

And the thing is, Oliver didn’t. Not at first, at least. Mostly because he didn’t imagine that Elio wouldn’t _want_ to move in with him — he has plenty of room, and Elio’s here half the time anyway. He’d like to think by now, two years into a steady relationship and a full year into coming out to their friends, that this wouldn’t even be a decision so much as a natural progression of things.

 

Now Elio’s reluctance feels like some kind of tumor growing in Oliver, made all the more ominous by the fact that he doesn’t know where or how serious it is. What could possibly be holding them back? Oliver has suspected in that self-conscious way he always has that Elio means more to him than he means to Elio, but it has gotten easier to dismiss that old fear as the years have gone by and Elio remains as steadfastly, almost impossibly devoted as he was when they first came together — now, though, the old fears are creeping in, casting longer shadows, haunting new rooms.

 

No. Oliver is looking in corners that he shouldn’t. They’re happy. They really, truly are. They see each other every day, and spend holidays with Elio’s family. They have friends who accept them. Elio is beloved by his teachers and on the fast track to become a career pianist. Oliver has the respect and support of his fellow faculty members, and his classes are among the most popular in the school.

 

“Oliver?”

 

“Coming.”

 

It’s a beaming, beautiful August day, almost criminal — the sun is shining and cut by a cool breeze, like a late September day, a reprieve from the humidity. They’re meeting friends for a picnic at Rockaway Beach, friends who are all too used to their tardiness by now (Oliver blames Elio; Elio blames Oliver), as a last get together before the fall semester starts in earnest and they all scramble back into their own little routines.

 

Elio falls asleep with his head on Oliver’s shoulder on the long subway ride over. Ordinarily Oliver would nudge him awake — as endearing as he finds Elio’s little cat naps, the last thing he wants is to draw attention to the two of them in public — but today he is feeling uncharacteristically needy. He wants the weight of Elio, the trust of him, that steady contraction of his ribs up against his arm.

 

Oliver pats a hand on his knee just before their stop, and Elio stirs awake, immediately looking sheepish.

 

“You can nap on the beach,” says Oliver.

 

Elio yawns, stretching out his spine. “Jamie said he was bringing his frisbee _and_ a volleyball _and_ tennis rackets, so somehow I doubt that.”

 

Their friends don’t even blink when they show up a half hour later than the agreed upon time; Kara and Minae, two classmates of Elio’s, immediately start fishing open the wine, making no attempts to be stealthy about it. Jen and Robert, a couple they met at a book reading, are already distributing sandwiches and chips. Jamie, a fellow graduate student-turned-assistant-professor of Oliver’s, bounds up to them like a puppy, armed with all of the things he mentioned to Elio and then some. A few other people join the group, invited by the others, and there’s a flurry of introductions followed by a sandy picnic and Jamie’s knee practically twitching a hole into the sand waiting to get up and run around.

 

It’s one of those days that feels like it will last forever, the kind of day that’s over as soon as it starts, already crystallizing into a memory, a snapshot of a time when everything, for a moment, was right. It reminds Oliver of childhood, or maybe how childhood was supposed to feel; Elio’s childhood, maybe, because among the things Oliver has learned to take and borrow from him is the very past he wasn’t there for. Elio has never minded. He may be stubborn and prideful and a number of things that Oliver has had to anticipate over the years, but he is always ready to give, almost recklessly ready, so much more than he takes.

 

Elio doesn’t end up reading any of his book, and neither does Oliver — Jamie has them in such constant rotation between his various beach sports that by three in the afternoon they’re all flushed and collapsing on their towels.

 

“Sunscreen,” Oliver murmurs in reminder at Elio, who, despite spending every summer beachside since infancy, burns like a lobster.

 

Elio groans. “I could just hide under you.”

 

“Not for long,” says Minae warningly. “Looks like rain.”

 

“What?” asks Elio, casting an indignant glance at the sky. Sure enough, there are dark clouds rolling in from the distance.

 

“We’re gonna pack it in,” says Jen. Robert’s already collecting their things, and everyone else starts to follow suit. Everyone murmurs their goodbyes, but Elio is still lazing on the towel, and Oliver frankly has no desire to leave, either. They wrap their books up in a plastic bag one of their friends left behind and lay back and watch as the crowd on the beach thins out and the air starts to cool around them.

 

Elio’s only pretending to be asleep, Oliver knows. He nudges his foot into Elio’s.

 

“So,” he starts, but Elio cuts him off.

 

“Didn’t the lifeguard just tell everyone to stay out of the water?” he says, narrowing his eyes down at a group of preteen girls splashing each other and wading further from shore. “The storm is bringing in crazy rip tides.”

 

Oliver casts them a distracted glance. “Elio, we should probably talk about this,” he says, trying to pull him back before he deflects again.

 

Elio slumps a bit. He doesn’t have to ask what. “Maybe — maybe next year.”

 

“That’s fine. That’s okay,” says Oliver carefully. “I guess I just … was wondering why the wait.”

 

Elio gnaws at his lower lip.

 

The question feels absurd even as he’s asking it, but Oliver doesn’t know what else to say. “Is it — moving too fast for you, or something?”

 

“No,” says Elio. He pulls off his sunglasses, his eyes wide on Oliver’s. “That’s not — of course not. I’m sorry, if that’s what you thought.”

 

“Well, I’m not entirely certain what _to_ think,” says Oliver, his relief muddled by his confusion, by the lingering unease. He wasn’t sure until now that there is something Elio isn’t telling him, and now that he is, he has to know what. He reaches out and strokes Elio’s hand, relatively confident that nobody can see it from where they lay. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

 

And Elio knows that. He’s always known that. It scares Oliver a bit, that he has to say it — say it to someone who in the past has both slyly and frankly offered up every part of himself without shame, without fear. Either something has changed, or …

 

“What if I don’t want to?” Elio asks quietly.

 

“It can’t be that bad.”

 

Elio casts his eyes toward the shoreline. “They really shouldn’t be doing that.”

 

Oliver sits up abruptly. “Elio, I want to talk about this.”

 

“I … there were three of them,” says Elio, not even paying attention to him.  

 

“What?”

 

“There were three girls out there, and now there are only two.”

 

“Elio — ”

 

And then they’re interrupted by the sound of a scream — sure enough, one of the girls is on the shore and shrieking incoherently, pointing to the water. Elio is on his feet like a tightly-coiled spring before Oliver can even register what’s happening, running to the empty lifeguard station. Oliver follows him, his heart beating higher up in his chest than it ever has, scanning the beach for a lifeguard that’s actually in the chair.

 

He assumes that’s what Elio is doing too, until he yanks the flotation device off the back of the seat and starts sprinting toward the water.

 

“Elio,” Oliver calls after him. “You can’t just — ”

 

“Go find the lifeguard,” Elio calls behind him.

 

Oliver, through some miracle of adrenaline, manages to catch up with Elio and grab him by the hook of his arm. “You can’t just swim out there to the middle of a fucking _riptide_ — ”

 

“There’s no time to — ”

 

“Let _me_ go,” says Oliver.

 

Elio rips his arm out of Oliver’s grasp. “I’m a better open water swimmer than you. I’ve been in riptides before. Go get the lifeguard.”

 

There is nothing dismissive or even authoritative about it; he can see the panic in his own eyes reflected in Elio’s. It’s just logic, the last handhold either of them has in the face of what has quickly spiraled into a life-or-death situation. Elio doesn’t wait for Oliver to nod, seeming to sense that he has his acceptance before Oliver even comes to it. He runs the last few paces and dives, disappearing under the waves for a moment before he starts swimming against the choppy waves, the flotation device still in hand.

 

Oliver turns back around to find the lifeguard, tunnel-visioned in his fear. He reminds himself, as his legs pump under him at an almost inhuman speed, that Elio is an experienced swimmer. That even if he weren’t, he’s holding a flotation device. That although there is a life at stake, Oliver can take some selfish, terrible comfort in knowing that it’s not the life of someone he loves.

 

The lifeguard is at the edge where the beach meets the road, talking to someone — it seems to take him forever to hear Oliver’s shouting, to realize that something is wrong. It’s all too slow — the way he takes in Oliver, and then registers the shrieking of the two girls at the shore, and finally, _finally_ gets on his feet and starts to move.

 

He blows a whistle, summoning other lifeguards, but already Oliver can see that there’s nobody in reach. He starts running back down the beach, looking for the tell-tale bob of Elio’s dark hair. He sees it, but only for a moment — he’s reached the girl, her head popping back out of the water — he watches as she instinctively, in her sheer terror, clings to Elio, shoving him down under the water in the process, grabbing hold of the flotation device a beat too late.

 

Later, Elio will explain what happened — that as she was flailing, she kicked him in the stomach. That when he ended up caught in the riptide himself, there was no air left in his lungs; that he reflexively breathed in when she kicked him and got a mouthful of water instead. That he stayed calm, let the riptide pull him, and did everything he’d been taught to do, but he needed air too soon and too badly, and it cost him.

 

But Oliver doesn’t need an explanation in the moment to see that what is unfolding in front of him is a nightmare he didn’t even know he had: Elio, disappearing into the current, swallowed by an unforgiving tide.

 

The lifeguard swims out to the girl, who is holding onto the flotation device and loudly sobbing, looking back — “There was a boy, there’s a boy in the water,” she’s saying, but the lifeguard didn’t see Elio and she’s so incoherent that there’s no way the lifeguard is going to get to Elio in time.

 

There isn’t even a conscious thought that comes before Oliver sprints into the water, furiously swimming in the direction that Elio disappeared in. He swims with a speed and a force that seem beyond any human’s natural ability, his eyes wide open in the water, cursing himself for every millisecond he has to lift his head to breathe.

 

He already feels a pit of despair within a minute, maybe even less. It feels like a dream, like a terrible, nonsensical, overly-dramatic dream, the kind where you wake up in utter shame or horror and then realize it’s okay. You didn’t fail; you didn’t kill anyone; you didn’t let anyone down. It was all just a dream, and you can turn the lights on and drink a glass of water and go back to bed an untarnished man, feeling oddly like you dodged a bullet even though you never once left your mattress.

 

This, though, goes on forever. It is terminal and exacting. It is his weakest spot, his _only_ spot, the very definition of himself. There is no option of not saving Elio that doesn’t end with Oliver dead as well.

 

Oliver doesn’t know how much time passes before he finally spots him — motionless, sinking, his eyes closed and his frame looking smaller and more vulnerable than it ever has. Oliver is reminded in some brutal way of the figure he and Elio helped his father pull out of the water, that sunny day in Italy, miles and years from now. The excitement of unearthing a mystery, of watching it pull to the surface; the hum of Elio’s presence beside him, that strange kinship they had that day in a sea of others that were marked by distance and disdain; the curiosity, the joy, the simplicity of it all.

 

Oliver all but wrenches Elio up toward the surface when he finally gets ahold of his arm, pulling so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if he yanked out a socket. They both break the surface, out of the riptide, Oliver holding Elio’s head up out of the water.

 

“Elio. _Fuck_. Elio.”

 

He’s not breathing, his face ashen and slack. Oliver hits a palm to Elio’s chest, like it might jumpstart him in the water, waiting for him to cough and open his eyes and _breathe._

 

He doesn’t. Oliver doesn’t know what else to do except swim as hard as he can with the one arm that isn’t supporting Elio. They’re closer to the shore than he thinks — close enough within the minute he finds, to his relief, that there’s a sandbar elevated enough that he can stand. He manages to scoop Elio’s limp form fully into his arms, pressing forward against the water like a madman, too terrified to look at Elio’s face.

 

The lifeguard stares at Oliver, dumbstruck at the sight of Elio in his arms, only just catching on what the girl was blubbering about. He runs over as Oliver sets Elio down in the wet sand, as the sky lets loose and suddenly it’s raining so hard all around them that Oliver can’t even make out what the other man is saying.

 

Oliver leans down, pressing his ear to Elio’s mouth. Never in his life has he been so terrified of the absence of a sound; never in his life did he think he could _be_ this terrified.

 

“Turn him on his side,” the lifeguard is saying, and Oliver does, and Jesus, it’s too easy. Elio doesn’t even feel like a person anymore, just skin and bones, and — 

 

“Come _on_ , Elio,” Oliver shouts — like this is some kind of prank gone wrong, like they’re in some kind of fight that Elio’s taken too far. “You can’t _do_ this.”

 

His head is spinning as he sets Elio back down on his back. Five minutes ago they were talking. Five minutes ago they were laying on this beach and fretting over something so _stupid_ , so far in the back of Oliver’s mind now that he wishes he could go back in time, savor every fucking second that his worries were that inane, that fleeting.

 

“He needs CPR,” says the lifeguard, trying to edge Oliver out of the way.

 

Oliver isn’t having it. He’s trained for this — it was a necessary class all the faculty took before being officially onboarded — and that aside, this fucking _lifeguard_ essentially left Elio for dead.

 

Elio is too precious to him. He won’t trust anyone else.

 

He brings his hands together, pressing the heel of one to Elio’s chest, and starts compressions. Elio’s so pliant under his touch that his whole body flinches with every push, but he doesn’t so much as stir.

 

He tilts Elio’s head back, pinching his nose and breathing into his mouth, trying to keep control of his own breath even when every nerve in his body wants to scream for all he’s worth. This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this _can’t_ be — 

 

Four breaths. No response. He switches back to compressions.

 

“Please.” He’s begging. Senseless. Unraveling to the last piece of himself. “Please, Elio, please.”

 

He finally hazards a glance at Elio’s face. It’s utterly, unmistakably lifeless; there is nothing in his Elio he recognizes. It’s like some kind of wax sculpture of him, like the soul of him is already gone.

 

And then Oliver is here, trying to press life back into Elio, and somehow everywhere else at once; he is staring at the sliver of light between his door and Elio’s in the Perlmans’ house, swallowing down the unwelcome desire. He is sitting at the river’s edge, pressing a finger to Elio’s mouth, watching it dutifully unhinge for him as everything else did. He is holding Elio in the train station; he is nursing the ache of his heart, and holding onto little scraps and tokens — a book, a postcard, a note.  He is traipsing through the mud with Elio in Central Park; he is weaving his fingers through Elio’s curls; he is stealing sips of Elio’s morning coffee while he’s too focused on his transcriptions to notice.

 

“Don’t do this.” He chokes out the words, not sure if he’s asking Elio or God or just anyone that is listening. “Please, don’t do this, please …”

 

“The ambulance is on its way,” one of the girls announces, just as another one looks down at Elio and bursts into noisy, uncontrollable sobs.

 

It doesn’t matter if the ambulance is coming. A cold, unfathomable kind of dread starts seeping under his skin, deeper than anything has ever reached, deeper than his core. He will try to beat for Elio’s heart, try to breathe for his lungs, try everything he can until someone finally tears him away, but it’s too late.

 

Elio’s gone.

 

Oliver wonders, in some distant, horrible way, how long it will take him to die, too. If his body will do him the mercy of shutting itself down, or if he’ll just live the rest of his days a walking dead man. One thing is certain: he will not survive this.

 

And then Elio’s body shudders under his touch.

 

“Elio. Elio — ”

 

Elio shudders again, and this time chokes and splutters, a stream of water coming out of his mouth and his nose. It is somehow both the ugliest and most beautiful sound that Oliver has ever heard.

 

His eyes fly open, then, in immediate panic, still heaving and choking and unable to suck in a proper breath.

 

“You’re okay, you’re okay, I’ve got you,” says Oliver, suddenly so dizzy with relief that he feels like he might faint. He presses a hand to Elio’s forehead, half in comfort and half to prompt him to tilt his head to get the water out. “Just breathe.”

 

Elio shuts his eyes again, his whole body shaking, his breath still catching in his throat. Oliver can’t stop staring, alternately trying to give him some space and needing to touch every part of him, account for his heartbeat in his chest, for the flush in his cheeks, for the curve of his fingers in his hand. People are talking around him, the lifeguard and the girls and a smattering of people who ran over to see what was going on, but there is no periphery to Oliver anymore. Only Elio. Only Elio and his wide open eyes and his heaving chest and his beating heart.

 

He struggles to sit up, and Oliver grabs him by the arms, easing him into it. Elio falls into him immediately, wrapping his arms around Oliver weakly, pressing his forehead into Oliver’s chest. Oliver closes his eyes and sinks into it, bracing a hand on the back of Elio’s neck, an arm around his shoulders.

 

“I thought you were dead,” Oliver breathes, before he can stop himself.

 

Then Elio sucks in a ragged breath and says something that will haunt Oliver for the rest of his days: “I think I was.”

 

* * *

 

They insist on taking Elio to the hospital as a precaution. Once he’s released, they take the long ride home in a taxi, Elio clutching to Oliver’s hand and staring aimlessly, like he’s woken up into some different world and doesn’t know how he got there. Oliver keeps sneaking glances at him, and then not sneaking at all — just staring. Cheekbones and curls and piano thin fingers, skin and gangly limbs and red-rimmed eyes, his Elio, his everything, still here.

 

Oliver gives the driver his address. Elio wordlessly follows him up to the apartment, sits down on the old couch, and curls himself into the corner of it, making himself virtually untouchable, like some kind of island.

 

Oliver sits beside him anyway, resting a hand on his knee. “Do you want to call your parents?”

 

Elio shakes his head without looking at him. They sit there like that for a long spell, Oliver waiting, Elio staring at nothing, until Elio finally pushes himself out of the corner and leans into Oliver’s shoulder and sinks into him, letting Oliver wrap his arms around him.

 

“You scared the hell out of me today,” Oliver murmurs. An understatement if there ever were one, but he doesn’t want to upset Elio anymore than he already is.

 

It takes a few seconds for Elio to speak. “How … how long was I out?”

 

“I don’t know,” Oliver answers honestly. “Forever. A few minutes. Too long.”

 

Elio burrows a little further into him. “I was — I think I was in Italy.” He swallows, hard. “The house was empty. You were outside, but I was looking out the balcony, and you were just out of sight — around the back, in the garden.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Elio nods into his chest. “We were happy.”

 

He can tell that there’s more. That Elio needs to get whatever it is off of his chest. “What happened next?”

 

“I heard you calling for me, from the garden. You sounded scared.”

 

“I was.”

 

“I ran, or I tried to. Down the stairs and outside. It started to rain. Everything was wet — like that thunderstorm, that day we lost power.”

 

“I remember.”

 

“You weren’t there, though. In the garden. It was empty, but you were still calling me. From the sky, maybe.”

 

Oliver tightens his grip around Elio, like the universe might change its mind at any moment and take him back. “Were you scared?”

 

“No,” says Elio. “You were there.”

 

Oliver closes his eyes, breathing Elio in — the faint whiff of his shampoo, the salt still unwashed from the water, that distinctive sweetness of him. He tries, in that moment, to see what Elio saw, like he can absorb the memory of it through him; like he really is in the garden, heeding some tomato-growing wisdom from Anchise, picking peaches for an afternoon siesta. When he tries to imagine it, though, it feels oddly as though it is an Oliver in the future, and not an Oliver in the past.

 

As if he is voicing the thought out loud, Elio shifts and turns his gaze up to Oliver and says, “I want to be with you forever, you know.”

 

Oliver is so overcome that his throat is almost too tight to speak. “I do.”

 

Elio untangles himself from Oliver so he can look at him more directly. “I hoped so, but we haven’t actually said it, and when we were talking on the beach …”

 

“Please, please, forget about that. It doesn’t — ”

 

“It does matter,” says Elio solemnly. “I don’t want you to have any doubts. Not even for a moment.”

 

Oliver leans in and presses a kiss to Elio’s lips. It feels in that moment like they are sealing something; like this tiny, fleeting kiss is somehow more monumental of an understanding than any contract or ring or proclamation could ever be. He leans back and stares into Elio’s eyes, bound as he has ever been, as he ever will be.

 

Suddenly Elio’s face starts to crumple. “The reason I’ve been hesitating …”  

 

“You don’t have to explain.”

 

“I don’t want to, but I think I have to. So you understand that it’s — not about us, or me, or anything you might have thought.” He looks down at his lap for a moment. “A few weeks ago I was waiting for you outside one of your lectures. Two of your colleagues were in an office down the hall and left the door open. I heard them talking about — well, about us.”

 

Oliver isn’t all that surprised. They’ve been discrete, but not secretive. Most of his close professional friends know that he and Elio are involved, and the ones he hasn’t spoken to about it probably know through word of mouth.

 

“They called me your … _concubine_ ,” says Elio, wrinkling his nose.

 

“Elio — ”

 

“I’m not — it doesn’t bother me,” Elio says quickly. “Maybe it’d even be kind of funny, except that I know how much your professional reputation means to you, and I just thought — if we moved in together — it might look bad, to them. It might compromise you. And that’s the last thing I want.”

 

Oliver doesn’t say anything. He kisses the tip of Elio’s nose, his cheeks, his chin. And it’s not even about the comment, not even about Elio’s worries — Oliver is so far past any of it that it doesn’t feel real to him, like other people don’t apply to them anymore.

 

“You don’t have to protect me,” says Oliver. “I know what people must say. I’m not okay with it, but I’m prepared for it. It’s worth it, to me.”

 

“What if you get fired?”

 

“Then good riddance.”

 

“Oliver.”

 

“ _Elio_.” He holds Elio’s face in his hands. “Nobody’s getting fired. Whoever it was who said that? They were being assholes. I don’t even care who it was, because that’s how unimportant they are to me compared to the happiness I have with you.”

 

Elio’s eyes fill with tears.

 

“So move in with me, you goose.”

 

Elio lets out a wet laugh. “Fine,” he says. He settles his head back into the crook of Oliver’s neck, and murmurs, “Although I’m going to miss the rats.”

 

“And the cockroaches?”

 

“And the neighbor who keeps singing when he has sex.”

 

“Hey,” says Oliver, “maybe we shouldn’t knock it until we try it. I could sing you some ABBA while we — ”

 

“That’s it. I’m moving back out.”

 

Oliver lets out a sharp, unexpected laugh. After a day like today, it almost hurts.

 

“I’m glad we’re doing this,” he says into Elio’s hair.

 

Elio burrows further into him, tangling his legs with Oliver’s, the two of them so tangled that Oliver isn’t sure where his own body ends and Elio’s begins.

 

“Me too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My middle name is drama. 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for reading and commenting. I've been frustrated writer's block-wise for the past month or so, and it's extremely encouraging that people are actually reading my nonsense somewhere in the world <3\. Hope y'all are having good weekends.


	4. Chapter 4

The timing could not have been worse if Oliver had orchestrated it himself.

 

The October after Elio’s graduation from Julliard, he sets out for the leg of his first regional tour. He’ll be gone for a week, in Boston, then Chicago, then D.C., and then back. Oliver is set to meet him at the D.C. show, but even with that in mind, the separation seems unnatural. Elio remarks, too casually for Oliver not to pick up on his anxiety, that he hasn’t gone more than a day without seeing Oliver in years.

 

Oliver puts a hand on the top of Elio’s head, temporarily immobilizing him from pacing around the apartment. “You’ll be fine. Call me from the road.”

 

Elio leans forward and kisses Oliver on the mouth, deeply and needily. “No more tours after this.”

 

“Don’t be silly,” says Oliver. “You’ll love it. You’ll see.”

 

Two days later, there’s a knock at the door. How she got his address, or how she even got in the building past the buzzer is beyond Oliver, but there, unmistakably, stands Carly.

 

“Oh,” she says, staring at him so dumbfoundedly that it might have been he who stalked her into a corner of Harlem. “Well. You’re handsome as ever.”

 

Oliver, who prides himself on being so infallibly polite that he once apologized to someone who broke his foot, can only manage to say, “What are you doing here?”

 

And just like that, Carly’s eyes well with tears. “Can we talk?”

 

Oliver’s first order of business is to get Carly out of this building, away from his apartment. At first it’s just personal — he doesn’t want her in this space that has become so intimate to him, so guarded. Doesn’t want her seeing Elio’s Julliard mug propped up on the counter, or the picture of the two of them on their trip to London, or the haphazard disorganization of the closet he and Elio share.

 

And then, of course, it is practical — his parents don’t know about Elio. Oliver doesn’t care what they think of him, but he remains in constant fear of the fact that his parents are powerful people. A few words from them to the wrong person and Elio’s budding career might be over before it has a chance to begin.

 

She can’t know about Elio. He can’t take that kind of risk.

 

So he takes her down to a deli a few blocks away. She fidgets in her seat in that same way she always has, since they were children; shifting her keen eyes to look at him every now and then, seeming to account for whatever is the same or different about him. In fairness, he can’t help but do the same. He and Carly were never that close growing up — their relationship and subsequent engagement was more one of convenience than any real love for each other — but he still knows her tics and tells, knows that crease between her brows, knows enough that he’s already dreading what it is she’s about to say to him.

 

By the time they find a booth he has prepared himself. His father is dead. Or perhaps his mother. He feels a genuine pang at the idea of that, but doesn’t let it reach his expression.

 

“You’re living with someone,” says Carly. It’s soft, but still slightly accusatory; he still feels a distant kind of guilt for it, even though four years have passed.

 

Oliver doesn’t confirm or deny this. “Carly, why are you here?”

 

Her eyes drop to the unopened menu in front of her. “Ollie, I’m … I’m pregnant.”

 

At first he just blinks at her. “Okay,” he says, equal parts relieved and angry that she has come crashing into his life like this, leading him to believe it was for something else entirely — something that could and should affect him, rather than whatever this is.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have …” She swipes at her eyes, then, and Oliver sees that she’s crying. “The dad doesn’t want anything to do with it, and I just thought — maybe if — you were at a different place in your life, maybe the two of us could …”

 

The idea is so outlandish that Oliver almost wants to laugh, but he sees how earnestly upset she is and it softens something in him, something so ancient and buried that he can’t quite remember how he is supposed to feel it.

 

“I’m sorry,” says Oliver quietly. “You were right. I’m living with someone. We’re …”

 

He can’t think of a word that doesn’t cheapen them, so he doesn’t use one, letting the silence fill it in for her. She looks up with a watery smile and nods.

 

“I’m happy for you,” she says.

 

Maybe it’s because she sounds so sincere when she says it that Oliver isn’t thinking it through when he says, “We can — surely there’s something you can figure out. You’ll tell your parents. Move back home for a bit, until you get on your feet. It’ll be okay.”

 

“Maybe,” she says doubtfully.

 

He ends up buying her lunch, and walking her back to the train. She becomes a bit more animated as the afternoon goes on, telling him about the students in her third grade class, about her brother’s graduation from med school, about some of their old friends who got married last June. She very deliberately doesn’t mention Oliver’s parents, and as far as Oliver knows, that can only mean they’re doing just fine without him.

 

He hugs her goodbye outside the subway entrance. She pulls back, but holds him there; before he knows what’s happening, she’s kissing him.

 

At first Oliver doesn’t react. It feels for a moment like slipping into a memory, like that half-state of awake and dreaming during a restless night of sleep, where you have to keep waking yourself up and telling yourself that whatever it is you’re imagining in your head isn’t real. But it is, and Carly’s mouth is against his, and her tall, lithe body pressed against him, her fingers already bunching around the fabric at the back of his shirt.

 

He pulls away as gently as he can, not wanting to make a scene.

 

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, immediately putting her face in her hands, the flush of embarrassment so apparent on her face that it’s reaching her hairline. She sucks in a shaky breath and says, “Old habits.”

 

He wants to be kind. She has never held anything against him, even when she should have, and he knows that she means no harm by this, either.

 

“Stay in touch,” he says. “And take care of yourself.”

 

“You too, Ollie.”

 

She’s gone just as fast as she stepped back into his life, like some kind of ghost on an astral plane. Oliver touches his fingers to his lips, then wipes them with the heel of his hand.

 

It’s honestly the last he thinks about it that day. He returns back to the apartment, his folders still open with the papers he was grading, and sits back down almost as if it never happened at all.

 

Despite this, he knows that the decision not to tell Elio is a conscious one. He and Elio tell each other everything — the banal, the borderline stupid, everything small and big and in between. But his silence on the subject has nothing to do with how Elio will react, and everything to do with himself. He is aware that it would result in some kind of a conversation about his past, the same conversation he and Elio have had a dozen times before — and he knows Elio feels partially responsible for the schism between Oliver and his parents, no matter how many times Oliver assures him that it happened long before Elio entered his life. The last thing he wants is to bring that misplaced guilt back to the surface again.

 

A few days later he watches, beaming with pride, as Elio wins over the hearts of every member of the audience during his show in D.C. The two of them take the train back up together, Elio practically buzzing in his seat, checking the aisle every now and then and sneaking quick kisses on Oliver’s face when he’s certain nobody can see.

 

“Next stop, Carnegie Hall,” says Oliver.

 

Elio’s cheeks redden. “In like ten years, maybe.”

 

“Wanna bet on it?”

 

Elio tucks his chin to his chest, his embarrassment always preceding any kind of false modesty. Oliver smiles and stares out the window of the train. It seems to him like they’ve reached some kind of finish line here — or a mile marker, maybe. They’ve been happy, and they’ve rarely had to worry, but there has always been the unknown quantity of Elio’s future — at least, in Elio’s eyes. Oliver has always known he would be a success, but there is satisfaction in seeing it happen anyway, and in seeing Elio ease into it. They’re more fully-formed, the two of them. More concrete, in some way. They are finally both in a position to make impacts on their fields in a way they couldn’t have been when they first met.

 

Oliver knows he isn’t in any way responsible for Elio’s talent, but the pride in him still threatens to burst. It feels like a secret he finally gets to share with the world. Watching those people applaud, the admiration in their faces — finally, everyone else gets to see it, too. Finally other people will understand.

 

The next day is a Sunday, and they both sleep in until an absurd hour. Oliver wakes just as Elio is pulling on his pants.

 

“I’m getting bagels,” he says, pressing a hasty kiss on Oliver’s mouth.

 

Oliver hums in acknowledgment, and is still barely functional by the time Elio returns, bounding back into the bedroom with the telltale white paper bag from their favorite deli and two coffees.

 

“You’re awfully chipper this morning.”

 

“I still have my youth,” says Elio, sitting on the bed and busting into the bag. Oliver attempted to institute a no eating in bed rule when they first moved in together last year, but Elio has since converted him to the joys of eating without putting on pants.

 

Oliver’s too tired for a snappy comeback, so he settles for tweaking Elio in the side. To be fair, he _is_ turning thirty in the spring.

 

“Speaking of old men, Jim from down the hall asked if your sister was okay?” says Elio. He shrugs a bit, taking an aggressively large bite of bagel. “Wonder what that’s about. Maybe he’s losing it.”

 

Oliver pauses for the slightest beat while unwrapping his bagel.

 

“Huh,” he says. “Maybe.”

 

A few weeks pass without incident. The night of Halloween, Oliver has to be up early for a budget meeting with the entire faculty that he’s anxious to defend his request for, so he tells Elio to go out enjoy the night with his friends without him. Elio protests that he’d rather just stay in with Oliver, but Oliver forbids it — “It’s been forever since you’ve seen your old classmates,” he reminds Elio. “Go catch up.”

 

Elio leaves, reluctantly, and then on his way out the door snatches up one of Oliver’s shirts from the chair. “I’m going as a stuffy professor this year,” he explains, pressing a sweet if not a little bit mocking kiss on Oliver’s temple as he goes.

 

Oliver doesn’t know what time it is when Elio creeps back into their bed, only that it’s late — later, probably, than it should be. He peels his eyes open and sees Elio has his back turned to him, laying farther away on the mattress than he does most nights. Oliver closes his eyes again, almost unconsciously reaching his arm out to pull their bodies closer together.

 

Elio’s awake, he can tell, but he doesn’t reach out or curl himself into Oliver the way he usually does.

 

“What is it?” Oliver murmurs.

 

Elio turns to face him, the mattress creaking slightly under him. He seems to search Oliver’s face for a moment, his eyes cloudy, something unreadable in his expression.

 

“Nothing,” he says after a moment. “Too much to drink.”

 

Oliver doesn’t believe him, but knows better than to press the point. He reaches forward, the tips of his fingers ghosting Elio’s eyelids. “Get some sleep.”

 

Elio hums in acknowledgment, and before the weirdness even has a chance to settle in, Oliver falls back asleep.

 

Elio’s out for the count when Oliver gets up, not even stirring at the sound of the alarm. He’s still snoring softly and tangled in the covers when it’s time for Oliver to leave. Oliver figures he must have really done himself a number the night before, in that case — usually Elio will begrudgingly get up a few minutes after he does, complaining that the bed’s too cold without him in it.

 

He brings back pizza from Elio’s favorite dollar slice joint that night, knowing it’s his preferred post-hangover meal, but the apartment is empty. After a few minutes Oliver finds a hastily scrawled note magnetized to the fridge: _Out with Kara and Minae. — E._

 

Oliver wraps up the slices and doesn’t think anything of it until ten o’clock rolls around, and Elio still hasn’t returned — then eleven, and then midnight. Oliver waits on the couch, feeling oddly stilted, like a housewife in a sitcom waiting for her husband to come home late from work.

 

He can tell Elio’s drunk by the way he opens the door — too slow and then too fast, barely yanking it back before it slams into the stopper.

 

He raises a teasing eyebrow at Elio. Elio, to his surprise, doesn’t look sheepish, or giddy, or any of the usual ways he comes home when he’s had a few without Oliver — in fact, at times it’s resulted in a particular brand of horniness that Oliver has come to look forward to — and instead hovers in the open door for a moment, staring at Oliver.

 

Oliver is reminded at once of the weirdness he had forgotten the night before, of the way Elio stared at him then.

 

“Sit,” says Oliver.

 

Elio does, while Oliver pours him a glass of water and pulls the pizza out from the fridge. Elio accepts it with a murmured thank you, and sits next to Oliver on the couch, hiking his knees up to his chest and gulping the water down. When he’s finished, Oliver grabs him by the calves and scoots him so his legs are bent over Oliver’s lap, their shoulders touching.

 

Elio won’t look at him.

 

“Thought you were hungover,” Oliver says. “What a rally.”

 

Elio smirks faintly, like some kind of ghost version of how he knows he’s supposed to react. “Maybe I’m the one who’s getting old. I can’t keep up with my peers.”

 

“Well, with those girls I doubt anyone can keep up,” says Oliver, reaching for one of Elio’s feet and pulling the sock off of it.

 

Elio tenses. ”Do you ever wish I were a girl?”

 

Oliver almost laughs, until he sees the earnest, anxious gleam in Elio’s eyes. “How drunk _are_ you?”

 

“Never mind.”

 

“No, I’ve never wished you were a girl,” says Oliver, reaching out and nudging him in the shoulder. “What on earth would make you ask that?”

 

“Not even a little?” Elio persists. “Not even — ”

 

“Hey. Hey,” says Oliver, catching Elio by the wrists. He waits until Elio meets his gaze and says firmly, “I want you, Elio. Honestly, it wouldn’t matter to me. I can’t imagine a version of you — boy, girl, young, old — that I wouldn’t adore.”

 

Elio’s expression seems to sink. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

 

Oliver lets Elio’s hands go. “What’s going on here? What did I miss?”

 

“If I were a girl, your parents might — ”

 

“I was finished with my parents long before you came into the picture,” says Oliver, wondering how, for the love of God, they have ended up here again, when Oliver did everything in his power to specifically avoid it.

 

Elio isn’t finished. “And you’d be able to have kids. And kiss someone on the street. And — ”

 

“So would you,” says Oliver, “if _I_ were a girl, but I’ve never been silly enough to ask.”

 

“This isn’t a joke,” says Elio.

 

“Then what is it?”

 

“We tell each other everything, right?”

 

“Of course,” says Oliver, a cool trickle of panic running down his spine. “Why?”

 

Elio opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but then, at the last moment, leans forward and kisses Oliver instead. There is something too hungry about it, almost desperate, like he’s trying to find something he lost. Oliver tastes the faint sourness of beer on his lips and knows that he can’t be nearly as drunk as Oliver thought he was; whatever this is, it’s all Elio.

 

“I’m sorry,” says Elio. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I …”

 

Oliver wants to tell him it’s okay, but whatever this is has started and ended itself so quickly that it feels like whiplash. He doesn’t even know what “it” is.

 

“Forget I said anything.”

 

A few years ago, those words would have been passive aggressive, coming out of Elio — some sort of invitation to escalate into an argument. Now, though, he seems almost painfully genuine. He squeezes Oliver’s knee and takes a hearty bite of his cold pizza and asks him how the budgeting meeting went, all traces of doubt vanquished, as if the conversation had really never happened at all.

 

Oliver goes to bed that night wishing, for once, that it had escalated. That he had seen the ugly core of whatever it was eating at Elio, so he could find some way to carve it out. His instinct doesn’t fail him — because in the end, what happens is much worse.

 

Mid-November, Carly sends him a brief letter.

 

_Ollie,_

 

_I don’t have your number, and I don’t have anyone I can ask. Can you send it to me? I really need to talk to you, and I don’t want to just show up unannounced again._

 

_All my love,_

 

_Carly_

 

Oliver has every intention of answering it. He even leaves it in the top drawer of his desk so he won’t forget. But he has a final to prepare for his students that week, so he puts it off for a few days, and then a few more, the guilt ebbing a bit every time he remembers he hasn’t written yet.

 

The night after Oliver issues the written part of the exam, he comes home at eight o’clock to find Elio already in bed, the covers pulled up so far that he’s just a mass of curls and a sliver of pale cheek. Oliver resists the urge to disturb him, even though he feels a sudden tenderness that seems to demand he run a hand through those curls, press his lips to that sliver. If Elio’s sleeping through dinner then he must be wiped out.

 

When it reaches eleven and Elio hasn’t woken, Oliver tucks back the blankets to peer at him. Elio stirs, burrowing further into the sheets, but doesn’t wake. Oliver climbs into bed with him, gratified by the way Elio turns in his sleep and tucks himself into him, by the unconscious magnetism of their body heat. Oliver falls asleep the same way he always does when Elio is this close — so quickly and deeply that he often wakes up without solid memories of getting into bed at all.

 

In the middle of the night he wakes up to the sound of Elio murmuring in his sleep. This isn’t uncommon, although Oliver has noticed in the past few years that it tends to happen most when Elio is worried about something — a final in a class, a recital performance, a flight. He can never make any of it out, some gibberish language that sometimes seems like the part of his brain that holds his English, French, and Italian was mixed up in Mafalda’s blender and spilled out of his sleeping mouth.

 

But then the murmuring stops and Oliver sees Elio’s expression shift, his features twisting, his body rigid. He sucks in a breath and then another, and that’s all it takes for Oliver to reach out and shake him on the shoulder.

 

Elio’s eyes snap open and he sits up so fast he almost knocks his forehead into Oliver’s.

 

“Hey,” says Oliver, trying to pull Elio into him. Elio is still stiff as a board. “Were you having a nightmare?”

 

Elio blinks at him, then shifts his whole body out of Oliver’s grasp, turning his back to Oliver and swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. His body bends into itself, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

 

Oliver doesn’t move for a moment, letting him calm down. This isn’t a shade of Elio he’s seen before — Elio, who is usually so clingy that Oliver practically has to unhinge him from his body on their way out the door in the morning.  

 

Carefully, genty, he sidles up behind Elio and puts his hands on the backs of his shoulders. Elio flinches so hard that Oliver pulls them back.

 

“Elio?”

 

“You should just tell me,” Elio blurts. He sits up, wrapping his arms around himself, rocking a bit. “You should just tell me everything, all of it, I can’t keep finding out in pieces, I can’t — ”

 

“Tell you _what?_ ”

 

“You know what.”

 

“I don’t,” says Oliver, trying to keep the sliver of irritation out of his voice. He wonders if Elio is even fully awake; if something from his dream has leaked into reality, is making him say things he doesn’t actually mean. But then Elio turns to him, his eyes so red-rimmed that Oliver knows it isn’t from a dream — that he was crying before he even fell asleep.

 

“Don’t make me say it,” Elio says, his voice trembling.

 

It feels like someone has knotted his stomach into a fist. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

 

“Kara _saw_ you,” says Elio. “She saw you outside the subway, kissing some woman, and I — I told her that can’t be true. She saw wrong.”

 

“Elio — ”

 

“And then the next day I met up with Minae and she said _she_ saw it too, and I — I — still didn’t want to believe it, but …”

 

Only then do that reluctant gears start turning in Oliver’s brain. The night of Halloween, when Elio came home late. The night after, when he got drinks with Kara and Minae — his eyes so earnest and wide as he stared at Oliver on the couch — _Do you ever wish I were a girl?_

 

“You think I’ve been _cheating_ on you?”

 

Elio flinches. “I saw the letter in your desk. I know she’s been up here. When Jim asked about your sister — it was her, wasn’t it? The woman from the subway?”

 

Oliver doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

 

“Tell me,” says Elio quietly.

 

“It’s not — Elio, Jesus, I wish you’d said something earlier. I’m not — how could you think I would … ”

 

Elio’s mouth opens and closes, like he’s too overwhelmed to speak. And really, maybe neither of them should. Oliver feels a strange heat pulsing under his skin and realizes that he’s _angry_. He knows that he shouldn’t be — that Elio can only assume based on what is some admittedly damning evidence — but he is.

 

He thought they were stronger than this. He thought Elio _trusted_ him more than this.

 

His voice is hard when he finally explains. “Carly’s my ex-fiancée. She came up here unannounced. I didn’t even let her into the apartment — we went to get lunch.” Oliver runs a hand through his hair, trying to calm himself. “And yes, she kissed me at the subway entrance, and immediately apologized for it.”  

 

Elio nods. Oliver wishes Elio were angry too, because it feels like there is an inferno in him, and he needs somewhere to direct it. Instead Elio’s relief is palpable, almost insulting — it occurs to Oliver in a fresh wave of aggravation that Elio’s been sitting on this for _weeks_ now, assuming the worst in him.

 

“I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”

 

“Because — because it has nothing to do with you. She’s pregnant. She got scared, she came here, she’s — we’ve known each other since we were kids, I guess it just made sense to her at the time.”

 

“She wanted to get back together with you,” says Elio.

 

“I don’t think she knew what she wanted.”

 

Elio’s words aren’t accusatory in tone, but they might as well be: “Do you?”

 

“ _Elio_.” Oliver can’t help but snap his name like a coil, can’t stop himself even when Elio blinks at him, stunned by it. “You think after everything we’ve been through, everything I’ve walked away from, that I don’t know what I _want?_ ”

 

Elio turns away from him, then steps off the bed and walks to the other side of the room. The apartment suddenly seems smaller than it ever has, suffocating the two of them, like the walls are mirrors that just show them their own reflections over and over and into infinity.

 

“You could have it back. The things you walked away from.” Still not an accusation, but something worse — an offer. Elio’s voice sounds hollow. He turns just slightly, tilting his head so Oliver can see half of his shadowed face. “You know that, don’t you? You could go with her, and help raise that baby, and everything would just … snap back into place. Your parents. Your old friends.”

 

“What the _fuck_ , Elio.”

 

“I just don’t want you to — ”

 

“Are you trying to leave me?”

 

Elio clutches his arms in front of his chest again. “ _No_. No. Oliver, no. I just — if _you_ wanted to — I just don’t want to hold you back. I couldn’t live with it. I couldn’t, I thought I could, but — ”

 

“You think I want to leave _you?_ ”

 

“I don’t know,” says Elio miserably, his eyes darting to the floor, searching it like he’s looking for the right thing to say. “I don’t know, I don’t — ”

 

“Honestly, the only reason I didn’t tell you is that we _wouldn’t_ get into this. I — I don’t want you and Carly ever meeting, I don’t want any part of that _world_ to even touch you — ”

 

“I know,” says Elio, “I — ”

 

“No, you clearly _don’t_ ,” says Oliver. The heat is rising in him, too much to be contained, years and years of it that go back so much deeper than the time he has known Elio that he’s almost scared to feel it now. And then, strangling that anger, the fear that pulses through him every time he lets his thoughts stray too far: “And it’s _not_ because I’m ashamed, or because I don’t want to be here, but because if they knew who you were — if they had a name, just a _name_ , Elio — they’d _destroy_ you. That’s what they do. They’d take your name and drag it through the mud, and there would _be_ no touring, no career, no _nothing_ , because of _me_.”

 

It takes Elio so long to speak that Oliver has this disjointed feeling of being trapped in time, as if his words were only shouted into a bubble, not far enough to make it across the room.

 

“Then it’s true,” says Elio. “You can’t reconcile with them because of me. I’ll always be the thing that’s in the way.”

 

Oliver has to hold his breath for a moment to keep himself from yelling in earnest. Some primal, instinctive sense seems to take hold of him then —  _You cannot be here right now_. He finds a shirt on the chair by his bed and throws it on, opens a drawer and grabs his pants. When he turns back around, heading to the living room for his coat and his shoes, Elio looks so utterly stricken that he can practically hear the thoughts screaming in his head.

 

“I’m not leaving you,” says Oliver, through his teeth. “This is not me leaving you. I’m going for a walk, because Jesus _Christ_ , Elio.”

 

Elio swallows so hard that Oliver can hear it from across the apartment. He pads out to the hall, still in his boxers.

 

“I’m _sorry_ ,” he says.

 

Oliver pinches his eyes shut. He feels like something about to explode, like his nerves are open and exposed and will set fire to anything that touches him.

 

And he doesn’t want Elio to be sorry. He doesn’t want either of them to be _sorry_. This right here is just one more ridiculous, impossible wedge that his parents left behind — it wasn’t enough that they stole his first twenty-four years and then some. It wasn’t enough to just endure the silence and live his life apart. Even _now_ , even _this_ , the thing that is most precious to him — they’ve never touched it, but they’ve poisoned it still.

 

He’ll never escape them. He’ll be outrunning that poison until the day he dies.

 

He stops for a moment at the door. He should say something. _I love you_ , maybe, but that isn’t a thing they say to each other; it’s a thing that they know, made all the more precious because it goes unspoken. He can’t say that now. He can’t say anything else, either.

 

He doesn’t even look back. He feels his pain twofold — his own and Elio’s, aching in the bedroom doorway. It’s too much for him to bear.

 

The door opens almost of its own volition. Oliver doesn’t even hear it close behind him; he’s already out in the hall, flying down the stairs, out into the black night.

 

* * *

 

Oliver means to circle the block a few times and come back. Instead he walks ten, and then twenty, and then somehow finds himself outside of Penn Station, watching gray-faced, bleary travelers wandering in and out, schlepping their suitcases, casting wary eyes at passerby. He has the ridiculous urge to follow someone, anyone, into the station. Book a ticket on whatever train they’re taking. Get the hell out of this city, out of his head, out of the pit of his own mind.

 

His eyes flit to the stairs that lead into the station. He blinks, and then turns on his heel, so abruptly that someone might have called his name; he has to go home.

 

He takes the subway, fortunate enough to have had tokens in his jacket pocket, because his wallet is still in the apartment. He runs back up the stairs and then pauses at the door; he still doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to put words to this burden he has lived with his whole life in a way that Elio can understand, but if he knows he’ll never figure it out if he and Elio are apart.

 

But when he opens the door, the apartment is too still. Elio isn’t waiting on couch with his legs tucked into his body, or tangled in the sheets, or standing over a coffee cup in the kitchen.

 

Didn’t Oliver ask him to stay?

 

No. _This is not me leaving you_ , he said. He thought the _Stay here_ was more than implied.

 

“Damn it.”

 

Oliver does his best not to bring too much attention to it for the sake of Elio’s pride, but Oliver walking around at night alone and Elio walking around at night alone are two different things entirely. Elio’s a skinny magnet for trouble, practically has a target on his back. And their neighborhood isn’t exactly known for cracking down on crime.

 

He checks the kitchen for a note, but doesn’t find one. Knowing Elio, though, there were probably at least a few drafts of one — Oliver knows by now to check under the first layer of trash to see if he can find Elio’s familiar scrawl on anything. What he finds instead is far more disconcerting — balled up, bloodied paper towels, wrapped around melting ice.

 

Oliver blows out a breath. He shouldn’t have left, and he really shouldn’t have left for so long. If Elio didn’t leave a note it can only mean he went out looking for him.

 

He grabs his keys and heads back out, noting with even further concern that Elio’s coat is still hanging by the door. At least, he thinks, it means Elio won’t have gone too far. There are so few people out at this time of night that hopefully it will be easy to spot him.

 

It’s nearing dawn when Oliver reemerges. He blinks in surprise, looking eastward, toward the park. The two seconds cost him.

 

At first Oliver isn’t even sure what he’s hearing; his blood stills in his veins, and the street seems to come to a complete stop. He doesn’t have to understand what that _click_ is for his whole body to respond to it anyway. Sure enough, when he tilts his gaze back down, it’s into the barrel of a gun.

 

The man’s eyes are crazed. Streaked with red veins. Sleepless, tripping, something beyond reason.

 

“I don’t have my wallet on me,” says Oliver.

 

His voice is so calm that it can’t possibly be his own. It’s strange, staring into that barrel, how quiet it seems — how it all seems to come down to quiet, singular things. The sound of his own breath. His heartbeat in his ears. The thought of Elio, somewhere nearby, and the quiet, crippling gratitude that he is the one in front of the gun right now, and not Elio, when it so easily could have been.

 

The man doesn’t believe him, holding his other hand out. “Toss it to me.”

 

“I don’t — ”

 

“ _Toss_ it to me, or get a bullet in your head.”

 

Oliver half-hopes the commotion will prompt someone to open a window, or call the police, or anything, but it’s a pointless hope. There’s nothing anyone can do for him from here.

 

He stays very still. “I can go back up to my apartment and get my wallet.”

 

The gun jerks in the man’s hands, and Oliver’s entire body flinches. “What the fuck kind of idiot do you take me for?”

 

Oliver’s legs are numb, shaken from the impact that didn’t come. His brain seems to have processed that there’s no getting out of this, spiralled straight past fight or flight and into a grim, clarifying kind of acceptance. He’s going to be murdered. Elio’s going to come back and find his body on the sidewalk, or a cluster of police around caution tape, blood staining the concrete. He’s going to live the rest of his life knowing their last conversation was a pointless fight that Oliver had the power to end, but didn’t.

 

And Oliver is going to go someplace that Elio can’t follow.

 

“You have three seconds.”

 

Three seconds seems to last a lifetime. He remembers things he shouldn’t, things he’d rather not. An old babysitter’s rhyme to help him learn to tie his shoes. The smell of his mother’s hairspray wafting through the front hall on her way out the door. The low rumble of his father’s cough from a distant room in the house. The ache of laying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for too many years and too much hurt to pass. First kisses, missed chances, reckless decisions, and all of it punctuated with _Elio, Elio, El_ io — 

 

He sees the man’s eyes widen before he hears the slap of running footsteps behind him, hears yelling behind him that doesn’t even sound human, and then — 

 

The gun goes off. Oliver slams his eyes shut, but not before seeing a blur dive out from behind him. A curly-haired, skinny blur that he knows all too well.

 

There’s a thud, and then screaming — by the time Oliver’s eyes fly back open Elio has already wrestled the man to the ground and, despite the utter ridiculousness of the disparity in their sizes, is attempting to beat the shit out of him.

 

With the gun still in the guy’s hands.

 

“ _Elio_.”

 

He pitches forward, but not before the man frees his arm just enough to clock Elio across the face with the gun. Elio loses his grip, splaying out on the cement, and Oliver can almost see it in slow motion — the man’s arm is free now, free to bend at the elbow, free to take aim at the only thing in the world Oliver can’t live without, and Oliver isn’t going to make it in time.

 

Before Oliver can even make it halfway to the ground, Elio blinks and snaps back into action like a cat, socking the man in the jaw with one hand and knocking the gun out of his hand with the other. It skids down the sidewalk a few feet away. By then Oliver has reached them, launching himself on top of the attacker, stopping him from getting his hands back on Elio. Oliver is so focused on this task that he doesn’t even see Elio scramble to his feet, doesn’t even register what’s happening until he hears Elio screaming in Italian behind them.

 

The sound of it is so disarming that they both look up, and see Elio — sweet, ridiculous, headstrong Elio, holding the gun up between two shaking hands, pointing it at the man and yelling at the top of his lungs.

 

Oliver has learned enough Italian over the past few years of Perlman gatherings that he can keep up when everyone is speaking at a normal pace, but this — _this_ sounds like something else entirely. Oliver catches snippets of words that make sense to him, mostly obscenities and variations of _get away from him_ , but it’s all coming out of Elio so loud and so fast and so aggressively exaggerated by the _literal gun_ in his hands that Oliver doubts anyone on the planet would understand him now.

 

Whatever it is, it’s enough to scare the hell out of the man, who holds his hands up at Elio in surrender.

 

Just then the sound of sirens pierce the street. Someone has called the cops. Oliver could double over with relief, but Elio doesn’t even seem to hear them approach, his shaking hands still holding the gun, aiming it so poorly that he might as well have been holding a baton. Only then does Oliver see the thick stream of blood running down his face.

 

“Elio. _Elio_. It’s okay. Put it down.”

 

Elio turns to Oliver, his eyes so wide that he somehow both looks ten years younger and older than he is at the same time. He fumbles for a moment, nearly dropping the gun completely, before lowering it at his side.

 

The next minute happens in a blur. A cop points his gun at Elio, who freezes, and Oliver yells that he isn’t the one they need to arrest but the attacker goes ahead and helps him out with that by trying to bolt on the spot. The police recognize him, and finally he’s cuffed, and the cop with the gun on Elio instructs him to put it on the ground, and they all have their hands up and Elio keeps looking over at Oliver with eyes that say for more than any of them possibly could with words.

 

A neighbor who watched the whole thing unfold from the window comes out and starts talking to the police, and only then does the cop telling Elio not to move finally relax. Elio turns to rush over to Oliver, but Oliver’s already halfway there. He forgets himself entirely, taking one look at Elio’s blood-streaked face and wrapping him up tighter than he ever has, kissing him so hard their teeth collide, squeezing with enough force that he can feel Elio’s individual ribs. It’s an _I’m sorry_ and an _I love you_ and everything else in between.

 

What he actually says when the two of them separate is, “Don’t you _ever_ do anything like that again.”

 

Elio lets out a slightly manic laugh. “Deal.”

 

Oliver peels back a few blood-soaked curls from Elio’s face. “He really got you.”

 

“I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” says Elio, his hands on Oliver’s shoulders, his arms, anywhere he can get away with knowing that there’s a group of people watching them on the street. Like he’s accounting for every limb.

 

Oliver is doing the same, albeit less frantically, trying to figure out where on Elio’s forehead the blood is coming from. “That’s the adrenaline talking.”

 

“If he’d killed you I would have made him kill me, too.”

 

Elio may have stolen the words out of Oliver’s mouth. He wants to chastise him right then and there. _Don’t you dare say that_ , he wants to tell him. But he remembers too freshly the way the same thought pulsed through his own head only a year and a half ago, the day Elio almost drowned; remembers staring down at his bloodless face and seeing his own corpse in it. There is no Oliver without Elio, no Elio without Oliver.

 

Elio blinks back tears. “And he almost _did_ kill you. Because of me. Because I — ”

 

Oliver shushes him. “We were both being stupid.”

 

He reaches out to squeeze Elio’s shoulder, to convey some silent understanding. Elio hisses, and then looks just as surprised by the recoil as he does. When Oliver looks down he sees his palm shimmering with blood.

 

“Shit,” Elio says candidly.

 

“Did you get _hit?_ ”

 

“No, I …”

 

“That looks like a graze, son,” says one of the officers — not the one who was yelling at Elio earlier. “Probably just needs a few stitches.”

 

Oliver feels faint. “You got shot,” he mutters, grabbing Elio by the elbow to inspect it the blood on his upper arm.

 

“I got _grazed_. I honestly can’t even — ”

 

“We’re going to need you both to make statements,” the officer interrupts him.

 

Oliver nods numbly, and the moment the officer is out of earshot, says to Elio, “We are never leaving the damn apartment again.”

 

* * *

 

They go to the station and give their statements, and then swing by an Urgent Care. Elio doesn’t even need stitches. Once they clean up the graze Oliver sees that it’s almost just a thin line, almost nonsensically small, like it shouldn’t have been statistically possible for a speeding bullet to touch a person and hurt them so little. He is momentarily taken aback by the happenstance of it all — of the day he just happened to stay a few seconds later in class after dropping his pencil, of the conversation he overheard about a live-in study opportunity with a man named Perlman, of the office hours of his professor he used to ask about it and apply. All the tiny, insignificant moments that led up to the one significant thing; it had always seemed so inevitable to Oliver, but to think of it as inevitable, he sees, is to take it for granted. There was nothing fated. Nothing earned. The two of them are lucky — phenomenally, stupidly lucky — and until the day Oliver dies, that tiny little line of a scar on Elio’s arm will remind him of just that.

 

When they finally make it back into the apartment, the door hasn’t even closed when Elio snakes his arms around Oliver, pressing his fingers into his back, leaning into him. Oliver closes his eyes and holds him, just holds him, for so long that they both feel rooted to the floor.

 

“I was so stupid,” Elio finally murmurs into Oliver’s chest.

 

Oliver shakes his head, his chin skimming Elio’s forehead as they pull apart. “No. I was. I should have just told you.”

 

“I should have known better.”

 

Elio’s eyes are red-rimmed, or at least the eye that isn’t currently swelling is. Oliver has his thumb poised under it before the tear even starts to fall. Elio lets out a wet, self-conscious laugh.

 

“I know you’re afraid that you’re the reason I don’t talk to my family,” Oliver says, with a possession that he wishes he’d had hours before. “And I know it’s different for you, because you never had to — but Elio. I _chose_ my family.” He slides his hand down Elio’s face, lingering on his lips, his chin, the curve of his neck. “ _You’re_ my family. You’re all the family I will ever want or need. Do you understand?”

 

Elio nods into his palm. “I do,” he says. His words are careful, like Oliver is made of glass. “Sometimes I just worry if it’s enough.”

 

It isn’t coming from a place of insecurity, Oliver understands. Elio isn’t looking for assurance, for some kind of validation. He is looking ahead to a future far beyond now, one that Oliver has considered for years now but hasn’t brought up with him yet, cognizant of the fact that Elio is much younger than he seems.

 

He hasn’t wanted Elio to feel burdened, to feel the pressure of what’s to come and of what isn’t. He sees now that Elio isn’t lagging behind; that he’s been here the whole time. That it isn’t something Elio is ready to hear, but something Elio already knows.

 

He takes his hand off of Elio’s face, settling it on Elio’s heart. “This — you — it’s more happiness that I ever counted on. Than I ever hoped for. Every single day. Even days like this one.”

 

Elio smiles a wobbly, half-smile at him, placing his hands over Oliver’s.

 

“I don’t care what happens,” says Oliver. “Kids or no kids. Italy or America. Tours around the world or trapped in this stuffy apartment until the rats eat our bodies. The only thing that matters to me is that you’re there, too.”

 

Elio leans forward and burrows himself into Oliver’s shoulder then, clutching to him as fiercely as he did when they walked through the door. Oliver can feel Elio’s heart hammering through his ribcage, or maybe it's his own heart — for the first time, he can’t tell whose feelings he is feeling, what part of it is him and what part of it is Elio. He runs his hands through Elio’s hair, and closes his eyes, and for a stunning, breath-stealing moment, he sees it: the vision Elio saw that day on the beach. Crouching in the garden in the shadow of the villa, hearing Elio’s footsteps around the corner. The sky is dark and heavy with rain. Elio will take his hand, and he’ll follow him inside, and they’ll wile away the hours, watching the downpour from their perch on the couch; Elio’s feet in his lap, Elio’s smirk in the periphery, Elio’s home now made their own.

  
That future is so fragile. Oliver knows now better than he ever has. There have been too many moments, both in and out of their power, that have threatened to rip out from under them everything they hold dear. But as Elio shudders a sigh of relief, and the two of them lean into each other, he understands they are each a little more broken and a little more whole because of it — that they will be this way their whole lives, stripping pieces of themselves as they grow into each other, every day something new, something scary, something great. For the first time, Oliver doesn't look toward that future with fear. It won't be certain, and it won't be easy, but it will be theirs — the world can try as it might to break them, there is nothing more unconquerable than that.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALAS. The end is here. Thanks so much again for reading along and for your kind comments <3\. I don't know if I'll be writing anything more in the future, but then again, I always say that, and always end up right back on this site eating my words (oy). Open to suggestions for one-shots, if ya have any! My side blog is "callmemaybebyyourname" on Tumblr.


End file.
